Thursday, September 8, 2011

Tracking was done in PFTrack. There were some hand keying on shot 2 and shot 3 because it was sliding and because its too "jerky" for the character.

I design this character from scratch with influences from Iron man and the ninja character from metal gear solid. As I am not so much an illustrator, much of the model was figure out as I am modelling it. I modeled it on proportion with a real human in mind. The modeling tool was Houdini. The character was modeled finished in 10 days including feedback and changes.

The ship model is inspired by Feng zhu's design. It was modeled and broken(literally) in two parts for shot 02 and shot 03. The set of shot 03 was done using RBD of objects. and hand placing them for some of the rocks. This was done in 5 days.

Textures and UVs were done in Zbrush. I never used zbrush properly before until this project. So I had to learn on the fly for it for it. I generated 1k, 2k, and 4k maps to be used on different shots purpose. At this point of this, I still don't have a proper idea of how my shots will be like in composition and size of character in frame. The ship model was also textured in Houdini and merge together with the projection-baked textures in Photoshop. Textures in all took around 10days + extra 2 days for coming back to touch up and re output on a per shot basis.

Rig and character animation was done in Houdini. I have never done any of of those 2 in Houini before but the theory of things is the same as Maya so I picked it up as I went along. Alot of tweaks on the rig was done on a per shot basis to fix penetrations. Rig was done in 4 days and animation in about 4 days.

Lighting and rendering was done with Houdini as well using Mantra. some hi res mesh replacement was done on a per shot basis to get it to look "right". Especially on the first shot, I re output the mesh from Zbrush with a subdiv of 3 and on rendering in houdini there is another subdiv of 2. The longest render time was on shot 01 and its around 15mins because of its close up.

Compositing was done in Nuke. Much of shot 01 is very straightforward but alot of the color palettes were figure out. Shot 3 was extremely heavy as there were alot of 3D cards and the use of 3D projection for clean up of plates. Its more logical to use 3D projection clean up for a very jerky shot like shot 3 as compared to rotoing frame by frame.

Finally, after effects was used to put all the shots together and title, credits and end motion graphics.

And all those is done in a span of 9 weeks for the submission. And yes, many late nights.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

This is the flipbook of my current Masters Project.
I have actually handed in my masters project to the University, however the reason why I haven't uploaded anything is because I am fine tuning some stuff in it.
And because it was soo super crunchtime, I haven't got the time to even update my masters project blog. :(

After much feedback from my friends and University lecturers, I think I will fix the jerk of the character on shot03. Reason for that jerk is mainly due to the tracking as the character is very near the camera. I have fix it in 3D already but apparent its not enough.

Shot02 I would cut it alittle bit off the end and add an extra shot to help abit of the continuity.

More to come!

Hopefully in the up coming few days I will be able to properly upload my final masters project I can say done.

Saturday, July 9, 2011

My Masters Project Edit. Its sorta final but any feedback or suggestions are more than welcome as usual!

These are my tracked shots. Went pretty smooth as I got it done in a day. Saves me 3 days of production work!

This is a test render with just the bust of the character I am doing. I am testing the environment map and also the texture maps I painted in zbrush and touch up in PS(displacement, bump, spec and color maps are included). The disp map is not as visible as I wanted but I think I'll have to use a normal map to get the subtle slight scratches or cracks.

Friday, July 1, 2011

Hey everyone, this is the first post however its been 3 months into the masters project. To update things. The project is about a Cyborg awakening on a beach and discover that he has crash landed on earth. The main focus of this project thought to be character animation & Compositing with elements of matte painting.

Softwares being used are mainly Houdini & Nuke. Other application includes Photoshop, After Effects, Maya, Zbrush & PFTrack.

The down side of this current project is the fact that I would have to dive into character design, modelling & texturing a character. Its most definitely not a strength and to get this done I got alot of help from online cyborg references and also feedback from my mates in Uni. As of current, the character modelling is finished and I am onto texturing the character in Zbrush. The reason for using Zbrush is mainly for that fact that UVing is a lot easier than in any other 3d application I know.